Airing Fantasy Hockey Frustrations: Part 4- That Pesky Injury Bug

There aren't many headlines scarier to a fantasy GM than "insert key player name here to miss extended period of time due to injury".  In fact, the only thing scarier than seeing that headline pop up in your fantasy notifications is seeing it pop up not once, but three times within one season.

I lost TJ Oshie a while back when he broke an ankle and parked himself on the IR. Now I know what you're saying-why the heck is he still on the team?  The answer is very simple really-it's a combination of too much optimism and a little bit of GM incompetence.  I'd like to say my delayed reaction is justified because everyone worth having is already on a team, but Osh-Kosh-B-Gosh went down a while ago and odds are I could have grabbed a replacement when it happened.  But I didn't and here I stand on December 20th thinking, "oh maybe I should try and replace him since he's doing me absolutely no good."  Yeah I know.  Lessons learned. 

With him injured, I have a whopping TWO centers on my team (one of them being half of the team name and the other being half of the biggest hockey-country music power couple since...well ever) and I'd like to take some pressure of them by adding a third center.  The leading two options at this point are Nik Antropov (yeah who thought he'd EVER be listed as the solution to ANYTHING) or Scott Gomez.  Gomez may get the nod here because then I will have matching Montreal Canadiens mighty mites.  They are  like tiny salt and pepper shakers-so fragile yet oh so collectible.  We'll see.  Maybe Oshie will miraculously heal over Christmas, but odds are either Antropov or Gomez will be on the team by 2011.

The man, the myth, the Mullet went down next with a sprained ankle.  Things were looking good there for about a minute and a half when it was rumored he'd be able to play again before Christmas. Then he ran into an assistant coach during practice and isn't expected back until after the holiday.  I'm not kidding.  You can't make this kind of stuff up.  Apparently a steady diet of Belvedere and Bud Light is not the recipe for strong tendons and ligaments.  Who knew. 

Finally, as if the RW position hadn't taken a bad enough hit, Ryan Callahan broke his left hand and will be out until February.  Well actually, he'll be out of the Sutterly Camtastic lineup longer because I could not even begin to justify keeping him on the roster while injured.  Odds are he'll still be floating around the FA market in a few months anyway.  No hard feelings buddy.  We'll keep your picture up in the locker room. 

I couldn't make it through the next few months with only one fully healthy RW so I searched the FA market for a solution.  ANY solution.  And much to my surpirse, I found the solution to not just my problem, but possibly the solution to the question of whether eternal youth is a myth or a reality.  Because ladies and gentlemen, one Mr. Mark Recchi is joining Sutterly Camtastic!  :insert celebratory trumpets here:  Not only does the Recchin' Ball instantly increase the average age of the team by about a decade, but he also brings a surprisingly effective scoring touch for someone who's 42 years old.  Holy cow.  They need to study this man's secret. 

Sutterly Camtastic seems forever doomed to reside in the bottom half of the league, but hopefully once key players get healthy again, things will turn around.  If not, we can always wait for the teams ahead of us (which at this point is all but two) to exceed their "games played" limit.  Now that is the plan of a future champion-waiting for another team to run out of a valuable resource and then swooping in to scavenge the remains.  Just call us the Atlanta Thrashers. 

Airing Fantasy Hockey Frustrations-Part 2: Honeymoon's Over

When we first met Sutterly Camtastic, they were a wide-eyed (not quite floppy-haired, but close) bunch looking forward to all the excitement of the 2010-2011 season. They weren't the best team on paper, but they had heart and a strong work ethic; fans (and their GM) really believed they had a shot.

Now things are different. The shine has worn off, the new car smell is gone and the "coolest toy in the world!" is just another cheaply made chunk of plastic covered in paint. Fans (and the GM) have started to realize just what this team is capable of and it's not pretty. It's bad. In fact, it's "oh for the love of the hockey gods, I hope we manage to avoid last place" bad. If this was an actual team, we'd be talking about firing the coach and trading players. That panic button? Smashed to smithereens by fans WEEKS ago.

It should have been apparent that this was going to be a LONG season when Brian Campbell went on the IR before the season had even started.
Then Michael Cammalleri decided the preseason would be a great time to test out his professional wrestling career potential on El Nino and ended up sitting for the team's opener. Well it couldn't get any worse could it? Ha. Clearly you don't know me. Niklas Hjalmarsson then got to ride the pine in the press box for two games for a hit from behind on Jason Pominville. I'm officially petitioning to make "dumb life choices" a stat category for fantasy hockey because my players would have that category LOCKED up.

The dynamic offense I so lovingly crafted has produced 16 goals 18 assists for a grand total of 34 points. In 67 games played. That's .51 points per game. From an ENTIRE team. Oy. :reaches for the pack of Tums beside my GM chair: Patrick Kane is the team leader in points with 6 (which ironically enough is the number of hours he remained sober this summer). He's also rocking a pretty impressive -5, although he's going to have to try a little harder if he's going to keep up with teammate Niklas Hjalmarsson who's a -7. Dude. You certainly aren't contributing offensively so let's try and play some D every now and then ok?

Speaking of defense, I'm calling you out Tyler Myers. Tyler, seeing as how you're last year's Calder Trophy winner, I understand life is difficult for you. Reporters now want to talk to you after practice and games. Your teammates have all these lofty expectations. Women suddenly want to talk to you when you're out on the town. At age 20, you haven't quite grown into your limbs yet. Plus you're freakishly tall so at least 22% of your day must be spent trying to find clothes that fit you. I get it. But, I'm going to need something better than 2 points and a -7. Calder winners can still be dropped to the waiver wire. Just sayin'.

Speaker of the waiver wire, yo Donut Hole...what the heck is going on? Prior to last night's shutout (which seemed like a stroke of pure dumb luck) you were pretty bad. That 3.81 GAA was not pretty. I know New Jersey can only afford to put 5 people on the ice per game so things are rough. But when the going gets tough, you can't turn to large amounts of Kripsy Kremes and crawl into bed. Pull it together Marty, whatever it takes. Pretend the pucks are Ding Dongs. Or maybe you could make a deal with Dunkin' Donuts; for every save you make, you get a free Munchkin. I'm not picky.

Then to kind of top it all off, I have the misfortune to report that the Sutterly half of Sutterly Camtastic is likely injured. We finally have some sort of confirmation from John Forslund via Twitter that "Sutter does not appear to be at full strength. He did practice." In my expert opinion (HA!), I think this is all the result of that awkward fall in Vancouver and having bones with the same relative diameter as a toothpick. I'm thinking some sort of wrist injury is what we're dealing with. Ugh. Give me a moment to pull myself together. (For the record, that picture is not actually from this injury, but rather "the hit" from his rookie season. But the hurt in my heart is pretty much the same.)

Now if I've learned anything from being a hockey fan, it's that the Stanley Cup isn't won in October. On the flip side of that though is the knowledge that it can be lost in October. Now I'd hate to have to throw away all of the Sutterly Camtastic: 2010-2011 Fantasy Hockey Champs t-shirts I had made up (hey there was a really good promotion going on!) so I hope everyone can pull themselves together and hit mid-season (or just any season) form soon. If not... :reaches for bottle of Jack on table next to GM chair: